Terms of Service

Boznaw is a public discussion forum. Users create accounts, join or start member-run Communities, publish posts and comments, vote on what they find useful, and message each other privately.

Almost everything you read on Boznaw was written by another User. We host and transmit it; we do not write it, commission it, or endorse it. Our role is set out in Section 8.

The defined terms below carry the same meaning in every Boznaw policy. The full list is set out in Section 3 of the Privacy Policy.

Services

The Boznaw website and application, and every feature within it.

User

Any person who accesses or uses the Services. You means the User reading this document.

Content

Anything created, uploaded, posted, transmitted or otherwise made available through the Services — including posts, comments, votes, poll answers, community names, descriptions and rules, profile fields, images, videos, links and direct messages.

Your Content

Content you create or supply.

Community

A member-run space within the Services, shown as c/name, with its own moderators and rules.

Moderator

A User who administers a Community. Moderators are Users, not our staff.

1. You must be 18 years of age or older to hold a Boznaw account. Boznaw is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly permit a person under 18 to create an account.
2. You must be competent to contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872.
3. You must not be a person whom we have previously suspended or terminated, unless we have agreed in writing that you may return.
4. You must not be barred from receiving the Services under any law applicable to you.

4.1 Creating an account

You may create an account with an email address, a phone number, or a third-party sign-in option where one is offered. You must give accurate information, and keep it accurate — in particular the email address or phone number we would use to reach you about your account.

One person may hold more than one account, but not in order to evade an enforcement action, to manufacture the appearance of support or opposition, or to circumvent a block.

4.2 Keeping it secure

You are responsible for your credentials and for activity under your account. Choose a password you do not use elsewhere, turn on two-factor authentication, and tell us promptly if you believe your account has been compromised.

We will never ask you for your password, and we cannot read it — it is stored only as a cryptographic hash. Anyone who asks you for it, or for a one-time code sent to you, is attempting to take your account.

4.3 Usernames

A username is a licence to use a name within the Services, not ownership of it. We may reclaim a username that impersonates another person, infringes a trade mark, is used to squat, or is otherwise inconsistent with these Terms or the Content Policy.

Three documents govern what may be posted and done on Boznaw, and they work together:

• The Community Guidelines — the plain-language rules for how people treat each other here.
• The Content Policy — the formal statement of prohibited and restricted Content and conduct, including the categories Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules, 2021 requires us to tell you about.
• Each Community's own rules, which apply on top of the two above within that Community.

Breaching any of them is a breach of these Terms. As Rule 3(1) of the IT Rules, 2021 requires, we will remind you of these rules and of the consequences of breaching them at least once every three months.

5.1 Technical restrictions

In addition to the content rules, you must not:

• Access the Services by any automated means, or scrape, crawl or harvest Content or User data, except as a published robots.txt permits.
• Interfere with the Services, overload them, or circumvent a rate limit, access control or security measure.
• Introduce malware, or use the Services to deliver it.
• Probe, scan or test the vulnerability of the Services without our written permission, or access an account or area you are not authorised to access.
• Reverse engineer the Services except to the extent a law says you may despite an agreement to the contrary.
• Resell, sublicense or commercially exploit access to the Services without our written permission.

6.1 You keep ownership

You retain all rights you already have in Your Content. Posting on Boznaw transfers no ownership to us. We claim no copyright in what you write, photograph, film or record.

6.2 The licence you give us

So that we can actually run the Services, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt for format and display purposes, publish, transmit and display Your Content, and to make it available to other Users in the way the Services are designed to.

That licence is limited in four ways, and we state them because a licence clause without limits is where most platform terms become unreasonable:

1. Purpose. The licence exists only to operate, deliver, secure and improve the Services. It does not permit us to license Your Content to a third party for that third party's own purposes.
2. Adaptation. Adaptation means technical adaptation — resizing, transcoding, generating a preview, reformatting for a screen. It is not a licence to create derivative creative works.
3. Duration. The licence ends when you delete the Content or your account, except where another User has already received a copy in the ordinary operation of the Services, and except where we must retain a copy to comply with a law or a legal order.
4. Attribution. Your moral rights under Section 57 of the Copyright Act, 1957 are unaffected. We do not claim the right to publish Your Content without attributing it to your account.

6.3 What you promise about Your Content

By posting, you confirm that you have the rights needed to post it and to grant the licence above, and that it does not breach these Terms, the Content Policy, or any law.

6.4 Synthetically generated content

If Your Content is audio-visual material that was artificially created, generated or altered so that it appears real or authentic, you must declare that when you post it. This follows the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026. Content covered by that requirement will be labelled as synthetically generated. See the Content Policy.

6.5 Feedback

If you send us a suggestion about the Services, we may use it without obligation to you. This does not apply to Your Content.

The Services themselves — the software, the interface, the design system, the name Boznaw, the wordmark and the logo — belong to Placeholder, to be configured before publication: [FULL LEGAL NAME], sole proprietor trading as Boznaw or its licensors, and are protected by copyright and trade mark law. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of it to you.

You may use the name and logo to refer to Boznaw factually — linking to us, writing about us, reporting on us. You may not use them in a way that suggests we endorse you, or as part of your own product name, logo or domain.

Most of what you see on Boznaw was written by other Users. We do not endorse it, verify it or vouch for it. As an intermediary under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000, we do not initiate the transmission of User Content, select its receiver, or modify it.

Posts may link to other websites and services. Following such a link takes you somewhere we do not control, governed by that site's own terms and privacy policy. We are not responsible for it.

The Content Moderation Policy sets out how reports are handled, what actions are available, and how decisions are made. In summary:

• Any User can report a post, a comment or another User. Reports go to the Community's Moderators, and can be escalated to Boznaw.
• We may remove or restrict Content, limit its visibility, label it, apply an interstitial to it, restrict an account's features, suspend an account, or terminate it.
• We act on Content that breaches these Terms or the Content Policy, and on Content we are required to act on by a court order or by an authorised government agency, within the timelines the IT Rules, 2021 prescribe.
• Enforcement is proportionate to what happened and to what has happened before, except where a category requires immediate removal regardless of history.

Moderation is carried out by people. Boznaw uses no automated content classification, machine-learning or AI moderation system, and we will not describe one until one exists.

9.1 Appeals

If Content of yours is removed or your account is restricted, you may appeal. The process, and what happens if you are not satisfied with our decision — including your right to approach a Grievance Appellate Committee under Rule 3A of the IT Rules, 2021 within 30 days — is set out in the Grievance Redressal Policy.

10.1 By you

You may stop using the Services at any time, and may delete your account from Settings → Account & security → Delete account. What deletion does, and what it cannot undo, is set out in the Account & Data Deletion Policy.

10.2 By us

We may suspend or terminate your access where:

• You materially or repeatedly breach these Terms, the Content Policy or the Community Guidelines;
• Your account is used for activity that is unlawful, or that creates a serious risk to another person;
• We are required to act by a law, a court order, or an order of an authorised government agency; or
• You are ineligible under Section 3.

Except where an immediate suspension is necessary to prevent harm or to comply with a legal obligation, we will tell you what action we have taken and why, and give you a route to appeal. We will not terminate an account for a first, minor breach that a warning or a single removal would address.

10.3 What survives termination

Sections 6.2 (to the limited extent stated there), 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 survive termination of your account or of these Terms, together with any provision which by its nature is intended to survive.

The Services are provided without any commitment to uptime. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of them. Where a change would remove a feature you rely on, or would make Content inaccessible, we will give reasonable notice in the Services unless a security or legal reason makes that impossible.

If we discontinue the Services altogether, we will give you reasonable notice and a period in which to export Your Content before it is removed.

The Services are provided on an as is and as available basis. To the extent Indian law allows, we exclude implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure against every attack; that Content posted by other Users is accurate, lawful or suitable; or that a moderation decision will always be correct.

Subject to Section 12, and to the extent permitted by law:

1. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, data or anticipated savings.
2. We are not liable for Content posted by another User, or for anything a Moderator does or fails to do.
3. We are not liable for loss of data or Content that you deleted yourself, or that was removed under the Content Policy or a lawful order.
4. Our aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Services and these Terms is limited to the greater of the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or INR 1,000. Boznaw charges nothing today, so in practice this is INR 1,000.

If a third party brings a claim against us because of Content you posted, or because you used the Services in breach of these Terms or of a law, you agree to indemnify us against the reasonable costs, damages and legal fees we actually incur in respect of that claim.

This applies only to claims caused by your own act or omission. It does not apply to a claim caused by our own act or omission, and it does not apply where you acted on our instructions. We will tell you promptly about any claim we seek to be indemnified for, let you participate in its defence, and not settle it in a way that admits your liability without your consent.

These Terms are governed by the laws of India.

Subject to the paragraph below, the courts at Placeholder, to be configured before publication: [CITY], Placeholder, to be configured before publication: [STATE / UNION TERRITORY] have jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Services.

15.1 Try the grievance process first

Before starting a proceeding, please raise the matter through Grievance Redressal. Most disputes about Content and accounts are resolved there faster than they would be anywhere else, and the process is free.

Changes to these Terms

We may amend these Terms. Every version carries a version number and dates, and the change history is published on this page. For a material change we will give notice in the Services before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Services after that date means you accept the amended Terms; if you do not, delete your account.

Entire agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Content Policy, the Community Guidelines and the other documents in the legal section, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Services.

Severability

If a provision is held unenforceable, it is severed and the rest continues in force.

No waiver

Not enforcing a provision on one occasion does not waive it.

Assignment

You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them to a successor to our business, on notice to you.

Notices

We may give you notice within the Services or at the contact address on your account. You may give us notice at the addresses on the Legal Contact page.

Language

These Terms are published in English. A translation, if we publish one, is for convenience; the English version governs.